On the other hand

In Israel, summer has kicked in with cloudless skies, soaring temperatures and schools out for at least eight weeks…writes Michael Kuttner.

While our enemies try to scorch and destroy, Israel in contrast builds and creates.

CUTTING EDGE MEDICAL ADVANCES

A Haifa-based company has been working with researchers in Fukushima, the site of nuclear meltdowns in 2011, to treat acute radiation syndrome. It has for the better part of the last decade been working on a cure for acute radiation syndrome, also known as radiation disease, the mass destruction of tissues and cells caused by exposure to extremely high levels of radiation, such as could occur in a nuclear catastrophe, and incorporating potentially lethal damage to the gastrointestinal tract, lung, skin and bone marrow, as well as other systems.

While there are many companies today harvesting stem cells to develop therapeutic products, this Israeli company was the first, and is still one of the only, companies harvesting from human placenta. According to their researchers, the placenta contains mesenchymal-like adherent stromal cells, which have been found by researchers to have significant therapeutic potential. The cells promote tissue repair, possibly by secreting biologically active substances, including cytokines that modulate immune response, along with factors that enhance the growth of blood vessels. These cells stimulate the body’s own mechanisms to heal damaged tissues. Because placental cells themselves are immunoprivileged (meaning that they do not elicit an immunological response from the body, as other cells do), they can be used freely for any purpose, without requiring tissue matching.

TARGETING CANCER

Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed smart nanoprobes that turn on a florescent light in presence of cancerous cells, which they say “may dramatically improve” post-surgical outcomes for cancer patients.

The researchers created a so called “smart probe” that, when injected into a patient a few hours before surgery to excise a primary tumor, may help surgeons pinpoint where the cancer is situated down to several cancer cells, permitting them to guarantee the removal of more cancer cells, and with the least possible damage to surrounding healthy tissue, they said in a statement.

GENERATING ELECTRICITY FROM GERMS

You can generate electricity from oil, you can produce it from natural gas, you can make it from nuclear energy, and you can channel it from the sun, via solar energy conversion systems. You can even generate electricity from photosynthetic bacteria, also known as cyanobacteria, based on a new innovation developed at the Technion. The researchers have developed an energy-producing system that exploits both the photosynthesis and respiratory processes that cyanobacteria undergo, with the harvested energy leveraged to generate electricity based on hydrogen.

No mechanical process is required to generate the power, and no fossil fuels need to be burned in order to produce the electricity. One of the breakthroughs of this study was the use of live bacteria, said the researchers — and as an extra bonus, no bacteria are expected to be harmed in the process of generating power.

With this innovation, the day of the fossil fuel may soon be gone. The vagaries of solar power generation (namely, that it only works when the sun is out) will no longer limit the generation of clean energy, nor will the dangerous power of the atom be needed as a source of energy. Instead, the power plant of the future could very well be a massive colony of cyanobacteria, just doing their thing — producing hydrogen energy from their natural process of living, with humans harvesting that energy to create electricity, clean-burning hydrogen fuel, and more.

CLOWNING AROUND

The Yazidi minority in Iraq were targeted and massacred by Islamic jihadists while the international community did nothing to save them.

Now a group of Yazidis has recently traveled to Israel from Iraq and taken a course in medical clowning, with the goal of helping traumatized children from persecuted minorities in the war-ravaged country.

The course was prepared by Dram Doctors, an organization that trains medical clowns, as well as the UK-based Road to Peace charity, Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital and Israel’s Foreign Ministry. “The participants in the special training left Israel during the weekend with new tools and techniques that will help them put smiles on the faces of people who live in war zones, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or gender,” the Foreign Ministry said.

PALESTINIAN ARAB CHILDREN RECEIVE TREATMENT IN ISRAEL

Hamas uses children as human shields in the hope that they will become martyrs. Meanwhile those suffering from genuine medical problems are receiving help in Israeli hospitals. As it is highly unlikely that your local media will have reported this here is a short video clip which you can circulate to your friends:

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